Off grid....Solar panels from ebay.....Biogas.....

I am writing this sitting here in a hotel in Germany..... waiting to be collected to go to BG ,

The van engine has had it......hit a giant puddle of water and engine swallowed it....whole thing is bent inside, even the cam belt snapped when it hydraulic locked , ADAC wont tow it....even though I am a member , they say value of van is less than the moving costs!

I have been investigating and testing for some time ways of going self sufficient. Its only something I could do a bit at a time and obviously only at home not in a glue factory....but I want to try and see how it goes reducing use of outside services

Back in May I bought a fold up 50W portable solar set from eBay for about £80 as an experiment to see if solar actually worked at all, I presumed at that price it must be quite bad,,,,

I cant see the point of saying oh....I have saved money on the bills only 30 years to get it back.....when spending tens of thousands of pounds on things to do it that could be done far cheaper, the environment is better off a bit by using solar but in my mind everything should be as low cost as possible as long as it works well! , self install is going to save money and allow people to understand the system better so I think it should be DIY install if possible.

Cheap solar portable seemed to work OK , we only used it charging a 70Ah 12v lead acid for a couple of 12v 20w CFL light bulbs and they seemed to work well and it didn't run out, even though it wasn't exactly sunny a lot of the time, but it was only experiment No.1......

We were also using portable solar lights from Maplins that look like rear view mirrors from cars, they seem good for what they are..... but a bit low on power, 2 of them lit a room enough to eat if the other one ran out, but it didn't run out so we didn't actually use them much.

When I was back in the UK for the past month I bought a couple of bigger solar panels ( ended up with 1*100W and 2*250W ) from eBay , one from the UK and one from China , they both seemed to actually function running a small bulb ( quick test! ), now this week I shall see how they work, I should have another 600W of solar power this time , will buy more if needed, I cant need much for running my own needs in 12v

I bought a complete set with all the charge battery controllers and wires from China and another just the panel from in the UK ,extra connectors , fuses and wires,  2 extra 130AH leisure batteries from Halfords and 10 assorted 12v CFL bulbs from a company called gosolar a 100W , a 1500W and a 2000W inverter again from ebay to get 240V if needed, but I hope to avoid using them as they waste power.

I have decided to have no 240v lighting in the house, only using 12v system and just add as more power is needed, use backup charger running on bio gas powered generator to run it in less sunny weather or if the batteries get low.

Should be interesting..... 

Stove for now has been the wood burner that I don't use much and  a gas powered twin burner gas grill with a backup Coleman petrol powered one if needed

Eventually the bio gas will run the stove ( with widened gas jet ) for most of the year and cost nothing really to make or run as it takes all the waste veg material , for now I'm using bottled gas

I will be doing a step by step on the Bio gas as I try to build it and get it to work....I have tried a small 25L one a couple of years ago and it worked well, this will be much bigger probably more like 200 to 500 Litres

I just hope nothing too much has fallen off the old house near Stara Zagora..... in the bad weather there has been, I have only been away about a month but there has been some really bad weather....

I cant even get a car into the house in Vidin, I actually have a car parked there , flood damaged, but probably ok by now as it will have dried out., the the road has fallen away too much about a mile away from it as we are right up in the hills, river came into garden and flooded it a bit so its also a bit wet at the minute.....